could be. >> that's all for now. . i'm craig melvin. and i'm natalie morales. and this is "dateline." i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." i am being followed. there are threats on my life. i know we're in danger. i know we are. it's a riveting mystery that started in a place of glamour. >> it became a destination for the rat packs, frank sinatra. >> and ended in a case of murder. the wealthy heir to this legendary hotel dead. >> he was my father. he is the only father i ever knew. >> now police said she was next. someone in the shadows gunning for her. >> my suspicions are growing and growing by the minute. >> so, who was behind all this? plenty of suspects and plenty of

motives, anger, jealousy, greed. someone had 10 million reasons to kill. >> we look back and said, my god, i couldn't believe what i saw. >> you're not going to believe it either because in this case, there is a final terrifying twist. >> i see them with a crowbar. hello and welcome to "dateline." ben novak jr. was a successful entrepreneur and the wealthy son of a miami businessman. then he was found bound and blejonned to death in a new york hotel room. who wanted ben novak dead? in this case, there was no shortage of suspects or possible motives. but a mysterious letter would

lead detectives in a direction no one expected. here is dennis murphy with "family affair." >> if ever there was a little girl lost, it was maya bod. >> from when i was little, i was always in the way. >> she survived a mother/daughter relationship quite unlike any you've ever heard. >> my mother is like trying to hug a cactus. you will eventually get hurt. >> and if the intersection of blood and money intrigues you, pull up a chair and stay awhile because there's plenty of both just ahead in this story. >> it's really an amazing, unusual, frightening story. >> what ended so badly in a darkened hotel room with the curtains drawn, has its beginnings really in the warm sands of south florida. not the south beach of today, with its hot bodies and pulsating dance clubs.

that's all a marketing reinvention of a much-older miami beach. no, we need to go back 50 years or more when caddies with tail fins were pulling into the newest, glitziest hotel on the east coast. the fountain blue. >> miami should be a great city. >> a hotel wheeler dealer ben novak built it and they came. steven gaines wrote about it in his book "fool's paradise". >> it became a destination for the major stars who were performing at the fountain blue and lots of movies were shot there as well. >> novak was the king. he found a queen in a former coca-cola model named bernice with her beauty and effortless charm, bernice turned out to be the perfect hostess to greet the celebrities, gangsters and just plain guests who made the fountain blue the scene of the day. king ben and queen bernice lived in a penthouse suite.

then along came their prince, ben novak jr. >> he was a spoiled kid. he was a brat. >> ben jr., don't call him benji would be trotted out to shake hands of the likes of the jfk then back up to the hotel elevator. >> the kids who came to the birthday party, were complete strangers to him. just kids who were passing through the hotel. >> the friendless, lonely boy lost himself in the fantasy world of batman. the superhero became an obsession. even as an adult, ben jr. was still amassing a floor to ceiling collection of batman memorabilia. he bought an old bat mobile. just as the rat pack faded away, so too did the fountain blue. by the late '70s, miami beach was regarded as a stale place for old people.

ben novak sr. lost the hotel to bankruptcy and died not long afterwards. the son, ben jr., all grown up now, stayed in the hospitality business and made his mark. >> he created a company ran out of his home here that organized conventions in big hotels. like his father, he was a hard-nosed businessman. and in time, he was grossing $50 million a year. and like his father, he needed someone like his mother to mix and mingle with the clients. he found that woman in a lady from ecuador. her name is narcy and she had a little girl named may. >> my mother is a lot of fun. you know, she definitely partied. >> when ben jr. met her, she was partying for tips as a stripper in a sleesy miami club, supporting herself and her little girl. >> she did very well with it, i guess? >> she did very well. my mother is a survivor. she adjusts to pretty much anything.

>> narcy left behind her stripper pole to marry ben jr. she felt like excess baggage. she was dispatched to boarding school at the age of 8. >> did you feel you had been shipped off? >> kind of. >> you had a tough childhood. >> best thing is that it's over. >> ben jr. and her mother lived in a $2 million ft. lauderdale estate with a boat out back. his elderly mother bernice lived not far away. but may, the stepdaughter, was never going to be a rich man's trust fund kid. she grew up tough and hard, estranged from her mother, paying her own way with bar tending and waitressing jobs. she had two children young and sweated the bills. it was the grandchildren that ultimately thawed some of the ice between mother and daughter. >> she may have been a horrible mother, but she was the best grandmother. she did everything with them. >> and ben jr. warmed to may. the one time lonely prince belatedly seemed to recognize a kindred spirit in lonely

neglected may. >> she saw me as his daughter and i saw him as my father. he had no children of his own. >> ben, after his own stunted childhood, finally found in his grandchildren some kids who wanted to play with all his batman stuff. >> he did a lot of the grandfather things with them. a lot of, i think, why we saw so much of each other was because of those two boys. >> when she was in her late 20s, ben jr. asked may to become part of his very successful convention organizing business. she would work alongside her mother and his mother bernice. it had taken 20 years, but they were finally becoming a family. >> you know, when i actually became older and got into the business, he was always there, guided me and showed me how to do things. >> then sadness. in the spring of 2009, bernice in her late 80s slipped and taken a nasty fall getting out of her car. she struggled to the house and died. may thought the time had come. for years ben had been asking

her to consider becoming his legally adopted daughter. she thought it would be the perfect father's day gift for him. >> i started thinking, bernice had just passed. and it would be something nice for him, you know, to be like, okay, you do have a daughter. because i do feel like i am his daughter to this day. so it never got legally changed. all the paperwork is still on his desk. >> it never got attended to because of the brutal event three months after bernice's passing. ben, narcy and may were putting on a big convention in hotel in new york. just after 7:30 sunday morning, july 12th, 2009, the last day of the convention, hotel security got the urgent call. something very bad had happened in one of the suites. a 58-year-old man had been found

bound and bludgeoned to death in the bedroom. ben novak jr., the one-time prince of the fountain blue had been murdered. coming up, the investigation begins. >> 150 rooms. ♪i get down on my knees ♪and i start to pray ♪till the tears run down from my eyes♪ ♪lord somebody, ooh somebody ♪can anybody find me somebody to love?♪ alexa, play queen on amazon music. [music playing] the no added hormones in land o' frost premium sliced meats have moms buying in. in bulk. boom! what a beefsteak. gotta love it. land o' frost premium. a slice above. help protect your pet, home, and yard. ah, it ended to soon.

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the sprawling hilton hotel in rybrook, new york, was host to 2,000 amway conventioneres

that summer in 2009. one of the suites had become a homicide scene. sergeant terry wilson from the local police would lead the investigation. >> i couldn't believe what i saw. i went in the room and there was the victim hog tied on the floor and it was a bloody mess. >> what does na tell you? >> this was a targeted individual. >> was it true that his eyes were also gouged out? >> yes. yes. >> sergeant wilson learned that the victim was ben novak jr., a name that meant nothing to him. the murdered man's wife and stepdaughter had been escorted to a nearby hotel room so investigators could take their statements. the wife of 20 years, narcy, told sergeant wilson that her husband had been up all night working on convention details and didn't go to bed, she thought, until about 6:30 in the morning. she then gone downstairs around 7:00 a.m. to oversea getting breakfast organized for the convention guests. >> could you verify for instance

that the wife was indeed at the breakfast by a security camera. >> yes. we did have our own video confirm what she was saying. >> the stepdaughter, may abad who managed the company money on these road trips, confirmed her mother's story of coming down to pitch in with breakfast. >> i was thinking, there is a lot of people. there is 2,000 people down here. i'll take any help i can get. >> after the breakfast rush, narcy says she called her husband up in the room, no answer. >> then she comes back up around 7:30 or so and finds him. >> yeah. >> she told the detective she tripped over the body, bolted from the room shrieking for help. >> our security guard was holding narcy at the end of mr. novak's feet and narcy was continuing to lunge towards the body, howling and screaming at the top of her lungs. >> when narcy told police about the timeline of the. morning, the computerized key card confirmed her rec election.

>> her card was used to get in the room from 7:40, but just after midnight -- >> no activity up to that point. >> no activity opening to go into the door. that right away tells you that then the door opened from the inside. >> if narcy had been downstairs helping with breakfast, and no key other than the wife's had opened the door since midnight, who then had admitted the killer or killers? an early on mystery. may meanwhile had been summoned by the hotel manager to her stepfather's suite. >> i asked them, what happened? and they're just like he's gone. you know. and i'm like, what do you mean he's gone. try -- go do something. >> the hotel guards wouldn't let her in the room. >> one security officer was talking to another once. he said it's a blood bath in there. >> a blood bath that sent her mother into hysterics. >> she is emotional, whaling, tears? >> she is throwing herself on

the floor. then she said, i think they're after all the convention money. it had to be a robbery. they know we carry a lot of money. somebody must have been watching us. >> unusually ben novak's convention business ran on cash, bags of it. the exhibiters would turn over their dollars to the stepdaughter may and her assistants on site. this weekend they had taken in more than $100,000. now, that money wasn't being kept in a hotel safe behind the front desk. rather, it was stashed in closets, under the beds of the staff members. question, had an insider who knew how they had gone about their business decided to rip off the company by torturing ben to cough up the cash? >> they had around 110,000 in cash. >> you're in motivation country right now, right? >> we're trying to figure out, what's going on. >> they didn't get anything from him. so of course i'm scared. you know, not just for myself but for the staff. >> and if someone had been roaming the hotel hallways with money and murder on their mind, there were 2,000 potential suspects. a detective's might mare. >> we decided we were going to down load the locks of the entire hotel. >> you're kidding? with the comings and going of every guest. >> 450 rooms.

it took him two weeks to do it. >> the hotel was bristling with security cameras, but unfortunately for the investigators none in the hallway outside the murder room. one of the first things the cops did was round up all that cash and get it stored in the hotel safe until the bank's opened in the morning. then sergeant wilson posted a guard at the hotel room being shared by the mother and daughter. before that sunday night was over, the two women would have another round of questioning with the detectives. >> if they totally grill med. you get mad. so of course i was fighting back. >> they were asking you the questions, did you do this? >> correct. you know, one of the cops told me, we have to ask these questions. i'm like, do you have to get like right here and ask the questions? >> a veteran west chester county detective named alison had joined the investigation and led

some of the questioning. >> may, the daughter, what did you make of her? >> pretty much i got the feeling that she was being honest with me, but you never know. people are deceptive. if. >> the police went through narcy's story once again. hoping for some overlooked detail or investigative nugget. >> she is a grieving -- all of a sudden widow. >> exactly. we need that information. she's the last person that saw mr. novak. >> narcy told detectives there was something of value missing, a gold bracelet that spelled out ben's name in diamonds. an expensive rolex watch was still on the bed lying in a pool of bed as well as an unexplained broken stem from a cheap pair of sunglasses. and then there was the matter of her husband's huge batman collection and a rare comic valued at $43,000 he was planning on selling that weekend. >> batman might have a motivation for murder, his passion in life. >> uh-huh. >> he had a valuable comic and somebody else wanted it. >> correct. >> wanted the value of it. >> correct. >> sunday was over. on monday, the cops would hear about the novak's tie me up sex games. on monday, when mother and daughter started to go for one

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♪ who had bound, gagged and bludgeoned to death ben novak jr.? >> it was overwhelming. to see it and just thinking, oh my god. >> in this case, the detectives

thought vikt mology would play a big role. figuring out his friends and families, his enemies. >> this is the address here. >> detective alison along with detective terry wilson would eventually piece together an unflattering family portrait. >> we didn't know an affair, domestic, just a random act. >> they cobbled together the story of ben jr., the wealthy son of a famous miami beach man with his eccentric batman collection. the wife from modest beginnings. the stepdaughter welcomed late to the family circle. >> we were still learning the dynamics of the family, how may was a stepchild. it took us a long time to learn more about the family. the novak's came off like candidates for the cast of a bad reality show, but good old fashioned robbery still looked

like motive number one in the homicide. >> ben novak jr. was a hard-charging businessman. lot of guys didn't like his style. >> that's correct. >> he could have cultivated enemies along the line. >> there were a lot of people that didn't like him. >> on the monday after the sunday morning murder, police took narcy and her daughter to the morgue to identify ben jr.'s bo dpi. that's when may started to get the creeps about what had happened. watching her stone-faced mother watch. >> i'm throwing up in a garbage can. detectives are right there and everything else and we all turn around and she is just staring at him. there was no emotion at all from her. >> that monday, late into the night, narcy and her daughter we were interrogated by the detectives. >> i should have been there. and i wish i got killed with him. >> detective alison broached the sensitive subject of the sex life. >> do you want to speak with me alone? >> okay. >> with the male detective out of the room, detective alison managed to win narcy's trust. narcy confided that ben was into bondage. >> and when he let you tie him up, does he like his hands

behind his back or in front? >> he likes his hands at the back because -- >> now, here, he had been tied up in the homicide. >> right. >> did you think, well, is this a sex game gone wrong? >> we brought it up to her and i confronted her with that during the interview. >> ben is found in a way that he enjoys sexually -- >> no, no, no, no. when i left ben -- >> uh-huh. >> he was not tied up. >> i just found it odd that the way he finds pleasurable he is killed in the same way. >> because she was the spouse, the questions for narcy got sharper as the night wore on. was she in on the murderer? >> if i'm being asked if i let anybody in, no i don't let them in. >> all the while may had been outside eves dropping on her mother's interrogation, getting chills. >> may said to me that somebody told her it was a blood bath. i don't remember anything blood. blood is red. >> just listening to her talk to

detectives, nothing was making sense. >> when she heard her mother describe tripping over the body and reaching down to touch ben, alarms went off. she had seen her mother shortly after that. >> i'm looking at her and there's no blood on her. >> in a scene that was described to you as a blood bath. >> as a blood bath, correct. i'm looking at her from head to toe -- >> you don't see any evidence. >> i don't see any evidence on you. >> what are you thinking? >> my suspicions are growing and growing by the minute and i'm thinking that i am this horrible human being thinking that my mother could do anything like that. >> for 14 relentless hours, homicide detectives tried to pin back narcy novak's ears, grilling her as though she had masterminded her husband's murder. >> did you have anything to do with your husband's death. >> no. >> she never ate anything. she never drank anything. and she never went to the bathroom. the detectives would come in, question her, she would just keep flowing, nothing phased her. >> question, had ben hired a kinky escort girl to tie him up?

narcy scoffed at the idea and told the detectives to tone it down. >> i want you have compassion, please. have mercy. if there is an electrical chair and i'm a suspect, give it to me right now. put me out of my misery. i want to die. >> shortly after 9:00 p.m., detective alison brought up the idea of a lie detector test. >> i take a hundred lie deck te tors, i do whatever you want me to to. >> at this point i'm hoping i am completely wrong. if she passes, i'm going crazy in my own head. >> may also agreed to be polygraphed but then narcy got cold feet about taking hers. >> and the daughter is saying to her daughter, what is wrong with you. why don't you just take the lie detector test? what's the problem? >> the mother finally agreed to the polygraph. may would pass her test but -- >> how did the lie detector test go for narcy? >> it didn't go well. >> she flupged it all the way

through. >> yes. >> when the cops were finally done with the two of them for the night, may confronted her mother. >> i asked her to her face -- >> what, did you have something to do with this? >> i did. i got in her face and they had pictures of like the crime scene and stuff and i smacked them in her face. >> you think your mother killed ben jr.? >> i think she definitely had something to do with it. you know, i didn't think she did it herself personally. >> the cops had only started to peel back the many layers of the novak family story. there was still so much about these people they didn't know. coming up -- >> i see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. >> when "dateline" continues. >> when "dateline" continues aim to say that more with aimovig. a preventive treatment for migraine in adults that reduces the number of monthly migraine days. for some, that number can be cut in half or more. don't take aimovig if you're allergic to it. allergic reactions like rash or swelling

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ginsburg has been receiving treatment for cancer a year after surgery for lung cancer. and the death of a resident may be the first case linked to vaping. the cdc says it is investigating more than 193 cases of severe lung illness in 22 states, all possibly linked to vaping. that's what's happening. now back to "dateline." >> welcome back to "dateline." i'm kral melvin. was narcy involved in the grisly act of the murder of her husband? she failed a lie detector test. even so, investigators had no evidence linking her to the crime. but there was one person who was convinced of narcy's guilt, her own daughter, and she was about

to put herself at risk to prove it. here again is dennis murphy with "family affair." the cops were going through hours of hotel security cam footage looking for what, they weren't exactly sure. the footwork team of a homicide investigation was under way. >> we're leafing the doors open as far as we're concerned. everything is on the table until the investigation stalls or someone is arrested. >> the body of the ben novak jr. was with the medical examiner. mother and daughter attached now by blood only returned to florida separately. may had her own agenda, telling the cops she would help them any way she could. she was collecting her things from her parent's house when she stopped in the guest cottage where ben had his home office. she was snooping through his files for the detectives, when she turned to see her mother upon her like a fury. >> i see my mother coming at me with a crowbar. i very quickly she swung it and i picked my arm up and she got this whole end on me with the crowbar.

>> it was literally the final blow for may. >> she was calling me a trader. >> she knew that you were getting evidence against her. >> uh-huh. >> could you have backed off at that point? could you have been a good little daughter and fallen in line? >> no. it's not in me. i knew what she had done was wrong, even though she was my mother, i knew she was wrong. >> the battleground between mother and daughter then moved from the novak house to the courthouse. a take no prisoner's fight over the will. may was giving her cop's her theory, her mother murdered her stepfather for the inheritance. narcy stood to get an estate estimated at $10 million. lock, stock and bat mobile. >> at this point, my mother was to get everything and i was like, she's going to get away with this. may filed a civil lawsuit against her mother, arguing the probate court shouldn't award

narcy ben's money because she had him killed. the court freezed his assets. so the big money was on ice, but may said her mother had already been then ill lis italy cleaned out safe deposit boxes kept by ben and his mother. >> was she on the list of people? >> no, she was not. >> she told them a story. >> she did. >> my husband is out in the car waiting and she had been dead for a week. >> yep. >> narcy was seen leaving the bank with a duffle bag. with police scrutinizing her every move and may hounding her, narcy hired new york attorney, howard tanner. he says narcy did have authority to go into those safe deposit it boxes. he also disputed may's contention that narcy was involved in her husband's beth. >> when she discovers ben novak, she acted consistently with how anyone else would act in that situation. >> and the defense attorney urged anyone looking at this case to follow the money in ben's murder.

down there in the fine print of the will, it shows that may, the daughter, may have had her own reasons for wanting ben dead and her mother accused. >> may abad and her children were the next in line. >> if somehow narcy was removed from the line of inheritance, the daughter, may abad would get $10 million through her children. >> that's correct. >> with narcy out of the picture, may would get a flat $150,000 and her two boys the rest of the $10 million estate. narcy began offering her own theory of the crime, may did it. >> when she realized the finger was being pointed on her, she accused me. >> of arranging to kill ben. >> correct. >> for the money. >> uh-huh. >> the mother and daughter finger pointing accusations continued without cease fire, even though they inturned ben in if family moz lee yum. narcy hidden beneath sunglasses ignored the daughter. the daughter brought her sons. >> one of my mother's body

guards flashed his guns at my kids. >> i'm packing in case there's any doubt. >> yeah. >> i saw the extent of everything when she threatened her own grand kids. and i always said she would never do anything to her grand kids. she loves these kids. >> there was mother/daughter war. bad blood for sure, but the detectives were about to learn there was another close relative of interest in this toxic family portrait. and more crimes to investigate, perhaps even another murder. coming up -- a clue that could turn the case upside down. >> this is shocking and it could be a big break. >> when "date line" continues. >> when "date line" continues. claritin-d. while the leading allergy spray is indicated for 6 symptoms... claritin-d is indicated for 8... including sinus congestion and pressure. claritin-d. get more.

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♪ mother and daughter each had a $10 million motive for murder as the detectives saw it. but sergeant terry wilson was focussing on narcy. he knew he didn't have enough to charge her with her husband's death, at least not yet. she had an alibi for the assumed time of the murder. the case against her was circumstanceal 37. then out of nowhere, an anonymous letter fluttered on to the desk of a detective 1,000 miles away from the crime scene.

gary personally knew nothing of the ben novak case and his department wasn't involved. >> there's people obviously that heard the name and knew about him, the fontainebleau and all. i wasn't one of them. i didn't know anything about it until i talked to detective wilson in new york. >> the letter, written in spanish, was nothing less than a blueprint to the murder. naming names, siting motivations. >> this is shocking and it could be a big break. >> sergeant wilson up in west chester couldn't wait to see it. >> whoever wrote this letter obviously had information, inside information. >> looking back, that letter had the whole story. the greed, inheritance, the obstacles in the way of the inheritance. >> the facts in that letter were on the money. >> here is the gist of the letter. it claimed narcy's brother had hired thugs to kill ben novak jr. sergeant wilson and his team paid an unannounced visit to the brother at his place in philadelphia. >> we apparently had caught him off guard and he told us to sit down and he would be more than happy to answer any questions we

had. as we sit down, we sit at this kitchen table and on the kitchen table is littered with papers. >> wilson and another detective spied something atop the heap. >> there's west earn union receipts. this is all out in the open. this is too good to be true. like pinch me. and we're holding a conversation with him trying to not focus on the table because we don't want to draw attention to it. >> when narcy's brother briefly left the room, sergeant wilson's partner furiously copied down, names, dates and receipt numbers. why would narcy's brother, bus driver, just scraping by be wiring loads of money to one particular person in miami? >> one of the names on the receipt is garcia, right? >> alejandro garcia. >> sir name of garcia in -- >> yes, sit. >> they began running it all down. and security cameras picked up

narcy's brother wiring the money from philly, but at the receiving end in miami, the cameras were on the fritz. no luck in getting pictures of this garcia guy picking up the money. so they moved on to the brother's cell phone records and found frequent calls to a woman in miami. turns out the phone belonged to garcia's ex-girlfriend and he had been using it. they talked to her. >> the big break came she said he had a defective eye. >> a garcia with a bad eye. the database search was narrowed. >> now we have some sort of physical description to see if this individual was arrested and lo and behold he was. >> garcia with a bum eye pops up. >> and that's him. >> and we get a photo. >> now the detectives were on a roll. with alejandro's garcia mug shot before them, they rerack the security tapes before the day of the murder. >> this is the main entrance. here they come. >> bingo. there was garcia in the dark shirt with somebody else.

his ex-girlfriend said he always wore sun glasses to protect his bad eye. but he wasn't wearing them on that day. >> you see the two of them walking very fast out. alejandro with the bag. alejandro doesn't have his glasses on anymore. >> with the broken frames which is are now -- >> well, apparently as the victim reacts to assault, he hits alejandro in the face, breaking the glasses, the glasses fall on to the bed. >> they rewound the tapes even further back to the first day of the convention and there they were again. garcia, in sunglasses and a yellow shirt and the other guy casing the hotel. in one chilling scene, they check out their future victim, ben novak jr. in the lobby. >> and in less than 48 hours, they're going to murder this guy. >> in less than 48 hours they're going to murder this guy. >> the second man is ided as joe gonzalez of miami. wilson and his team had two targets and started with the apparent leader, garcia. >> we started to hunt him down. >> the miami hunt didn't take long. garcia was picked up on an outstanding warrant.

the new york cops braced him. garcia denied ever being in new york. >> we saw video in the hotel. security camera. >> detectives had some surprises to smoke out their one-eyed suspect. they showed him stills from the security cam footage. garcia and his suspected accomplice in the hotel. the capper was a tape recording of a phone call between the detective and narcy's brother. in the call, narcy's brother sounding all cooperative says he wants to help the cops and gives him the name, alejandro garcia as a person good for the murder. garcia listens silently as the brother threw him under the bus. >> he told me who did the murder. he told me you, you did it. >> he denied being the hit man in that interrogation, but the message was clear. get on board now, confess, or take the fall. >> he will be booked on charges

of murder. >> meanwhile, the evidence against narcy's brother was piling up. cell phone records showing him near the hotel on the morning. evidence providing a get away car. >> the street boss was handling everything going away with narcy's brother. >> and who was the boss of bosses? with a $10 million motive, there was only one answer for the cops. narcy novak had ordered the hit on her husband. >> obviously, he reported to narcy or worked at the direction. >> what started as a small suburban village investigation was now a multi state conspiracy case. the decision was made to let federal prosecutors take the complex conspiracy to trial. the suspected hitman, garcia and gonzalez, were offered a deal.

testify against narcy and her brother or go away to prison for what would likely be life sentences. the two confessed to being the hit men in a murder for hire scheme. then garcia shocked the prosecutors. there was something else. a second murder they didn't know about. and if they didn't act fast he said a third was on the way. coming up -- just who was in the cross hairs? >> there was a hit out on me. with advil liqui-gels, you'll ask... what stiff joints? what bad back? advil is... relief that's fast. strength that lasts. you'll ask... what pain? with advil liqui-gels.

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♪

the two hit men had confessed, admitting to killing ben novak jr. they claimed ben's wife narcy and her brother paid them to do it, but still no charges had been filed as police continued to investigate. then the hit man, alejandro garcia dropped a bomb shell. he claimed he also killed someone else on orders from narcy and her brother, almost a year earlier. and he had gotten away with it. the murder for hire, none other than ben novak's 87-year-old mother bernice, the one-time queen of the fontainebleau died three months before ben in what florida cops and the medical examiner ruled an accidental death. a slip and fall getting out of her car. >> how does he kill her? >> he had a monkey wrench and he took what appeared to be a baseball swing and hit her several times to the head. >> garcia said he got paid $600 for the job. but why kill ben's 87-year-old mother.

because in ben's will in place at the time, if he died first, his mother, not his wife narcy would be the primary beneficiary. but with bernice dead, there was nothing standing in narcy's way. >> had they not tried to kill ben and succeeded in killing ben, they probably never would have been caught. >> and there was more. when detectives arrested garcia, they learned still a third murder might be in the works. someone else provided for the in the will. narcy's daughter, may. >> she was in serious peril. >> i always believed she was, i couldn't prove it to anybody. when we sat down with garcia and learned that there was a hit out on may, that became concerning. >> a battered photo of may was found in garcia, the confessed hit man's wallet. he was told, she would be the next job. >> well, may freaked. she needed to move apartments asap. and told federal prosecutors she didn't have the money. the feds told her they would get her the money but the paperwork would take time.

detective alison carpettier didn't think there was time. >> and here came a moment of big moral dilemma for you as a person and officer. >> yes, it was hard. >> i decided to give her the money and tell her to move. >> your money from your bank account. >> yes. >> the west chester detective loaned may $5,000 of her own money. may promised to pay her back. when prosecutors learned of it, they removed detective allison from the case. the defense,ed that they admonished would call it buying witness testimony. >> i can't sleep at night. >> i am very grateful to her because if i didn't move when i did, i wouldn't be here today. >> almost a year after ben's murder, narcy was indicted and walked before the cameras of america's most wanted. she and her brother were charged with racketeering and conspiracy for two murders, witness

tampering and a host of other charges. >> the plot that led to the death of ben novak was a family affair. >> when the trial got under way in federal court, garcia, the hit man, testified in ice cold detail how he killed ben novak jr. >> how did they get into the room? >> narcy opened the door and let them in. >> prosecutors argued that morning there was a small window of opportunity for narcy to let the hit men in and direct the assault on her sleeping husband. >> the victim is in bed. they get right in position. they signal. one, two, three and then boom. then the assault starts. >> they're banging him in the head. >> they hit all over the head, the ribs, i mean, brutally. >> the two hit men use small hand weights to pummel ben. narcy looked on. >> then there is a point in time where i guess he's making sounds, moans and she tosses a pillow in to keep him quiet. >> did they say that narcy tells them to cut out his eyes. >> she did. >> at mid trial the case against

narcy's brother was solvent. a long trail of wire transfers, credit card receipts and cell phone records connected him to the hit men. but for narcy, it was primarily the hit man's word against her's until the jury heard about narcy's secret cell phone. on the morning of the murder, garcia testified that narcy called her brother while they waited at a gas station near the hotel. >> narcy makes a call from that phone at 6:39 in the morning to say come on in. >> the coast is clear. >> coast is clear. that becomes huge because it's her calling her brother to say bring the killers in. >> that puts her right atop the plot of the conspiracy. >> yes. >> there's yet another twist. would you be surprised to learn that there was another woman in the story, a person named rebekah bliss. bliss, a south florida tattoo artist and sometime porn actress was having an affair with ben junior.

he put her up in a nice waterfront apartment and told bliss he was going to leave his wife for her. narcy, the story goes, learned of the affair and called bliss, saying if i can't have him, no one will. six months later, he was dead and without eyes to ever look at another woman. >> this case was about money and it was about narcy not wanting to be replaced. >> when defense attorney howard tanner put on his case, he zeroed in on the hit men's credibility and their motivation in testifying. he also attacked their allegation that narcy was in the room during the murder. >> they themselves stated they would do anything to help themselves. in my book, they would have been willing to lie. >> is narcy in the room? >> absolutely not. >> how about the disturbing direction she allegedly gives them, gouge his eyes out. >> it didn't happen. >> narcy's daughter may could have been involved in the murder so she and her sons could inherit ben's estate. if narcy novak disappears, she

takes and her children take under the will, those are facts. >> so that's the defense? jurors consider who is going to get this money here and it's not just narcy novak, it's the daughter here, may. >> there was an incomplete investigation done in this case. i'm not claiming that anyone else committed this murder. the defense here is that narcy novak did not commit this murder. >> detectives concluded that may knew nothing about ben's will until well after the murder. >> i didn't even know that my name or the boy's names were in this will. >> after a nine-week trial, narcy and her brother were found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy in the death of ben novak jr. and his mother bernice. they were acquitted of only one charge, involving the theft of ben's diamond bracelet. for the crime that conspirator's almost got away with the murder of bernice novak, the conviction carried a mandatory life sentence for both. >> the best part was that bernice could finally rest in peace. >> after the verdict, narcy spoke with telephone with "dateline" from praise. she would never done anything to

harm her husband ben and was innocent of all the charges. sergeant terry wilson and his team of detectives, the prosecutors won their case with some big assists from may abad. now her mother is gone and will spend the rest of her life in prison. >> she didn't see what she had in front of her. she had her daughter. she had two grandkids that totally loved her. and now she has nothing. >> and greed and some amount of jealousy presumably is driving this. >> absolutely. no matter what, i love my mother. she was my mother. she had grandkids that adored her, that would have done anything for her. and they did. and she just threw it all away. threw it all away for money. >> if you go to miami beach, the fontainebleau is still there. all spruced up with a new lease on life. and may has a fresh new outlook on the rest of her life, too. >> come here, buddy. >> in 2011, may welcomed a new little guy in her life.

a son she named her ben after the lost prince. the namesake he never got to meet. that's all for now. i'm craig melvin, thank you for watching. ♪ good morning, breaking news this hour. president trump expected to arrive in bordeaux, france, for the group of seven meeting for the group of major economies, the g7 the. >> the president there with the first lady. as we say good morning, i'm kendis gibson, it's 6:00 a.m. on the east coast. >> the president's arrive coming amidst the trade war with china. as he have left the white house there late last night,